Abstract
Laser aided Direct Metal Tooling(DMT) process is a kind of Additive Manufacturing processes (or 3D-Printing processes), which is developed for using various commercial steel powders such as P20, P21, SUS420, H13, D2 and other non-ferrous metal powders, aluminum alloys, titanium alloys, copper alloys and so on. The DMT process is a versatile process which can be applied to various fields like the mold industry, the medical industry, and the defense industry. Among of them, the application of DMT process to the mold industry is one of the most attractive and practical applications since the conformal cooling channel core of injection molds can be fabricated at the slightly expensive cost by using the hybrid fabrication method of DMT technology compared to the part fabricated with the machining technology. The main objectives of this study are to provide various characteristics of the parts made by DMT process compared to the same parts machined from bulk materials and prove the performance of the injection mold equipped with the conformal cooling channel core which is fabricated by the hybrid method of DMT process.
